Metroid Dread gets a Boss Rush mode, xQc and Pokimane announce a podcast, and gaming companies donate $200 million to Ukraine.
Welcome to the weekend. You’ve probably been playing Elden Ring all day, so I can’t blame you for having gotten behind on everything going on in the world of gaming, but what I can do is bring you back up to speed. That’s what these roundups are for after all. Today, we found out that you can finally play the Boss Rush mode in Metroid Dread, xQc and Pokimane are going to be collaborating on a podcast, and gaming companies have now raised almost $200 million in support of Ukraine. These are just our top stories and so read on for the rest.
Players in Elden Ring have been finding creative solutions to deal with rune farmers. In case you haven’t heard, rune farming is basically when a player sits in some hard-to-reach part of the map and then lets other players invade them, sitting back and relaxing until the invader dies trying to reach them. The result is a pile of runes. The farmer is usually AFK. Whether it's blowing them up with cannons or frying them with area of effect attacks, players have been posting their favorite ways of punishing rune farmers on Reddit.
Companies in the games industry have been coming forward in support of Ukraine for several weeks. Whether it’s Japanese studios like The Pokemon Company and Bandai Namco or American developers like EA and Epic, there has been a huge turnout in terms of fundraising. This was hard to quantify in the past, but we can finally put a figure on how much money has been donated. Gaming companies have apparently raised almost $200 million for humanitarian causes related to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
The popular streamer and content creator xQc is apparently going to be starting a podcast with Pokimane. “xQc mentioned in his offline chat before the stream today that he and Pokimane are potentially producing a podcast series together,” the fastest source for “any and all news and updates involving the best content creator on the globe,” xQcOWUpdates, remarked on Twitter. “According to his words, the first ‘trial’ episode would be coming out in the next few days and we'll keep you up to date on everything!” The streamer himself was spotted on Discord saying that he was “making a podcast with Poki” before adding that “I’m pre-announcing it here. We’re doing a fun trial run this week.”
PlayStation 3 and Vita owners have been unable to play certain games on these platforms for a couple of days now because a glitch has been setting them as "expired.” The expiration date is currently listed as December 31, 1969. “I dug out my original Vita and all of the games I had purchased and downloaded will not launch,” user Boreallis78 said on Reddit. “I receive an error message that the content is expired when I try to launch each of them. This includes games I purchased outright and is not restricted to games tied to my lapsed PS Plus membership. The store does not provide an option to re-download these titles. It only will allow me to re-buy them altogether which I obviously don’t want to do.”
The much anticipated Boss Rush mode has finally been added to Metroid Dread. This basically works like most other Boss Rush modes in so far as you fight a series of bosses. While your weapons replenish, your health remains the same in between rounds, requiring a little bit of strategy on the part of the player. This comes in the wake of news that Metroid Dread would be getting difficulty modes. The developer behind the game, Nintendo, added these a while back. In case you’re looking to get into Metroid Dread, now might just be the best possible time.
Justin is a news editor at TheGamer. He specializes in labor relations, intellectual property law, and game development. You can find his work in EGM, Vice, Unwinnable, Heterotopias, and more.
